the pitch clock is counting down to the MLB 2023 REGULAR SEASON THREAD

Why shouldn’t he be fired, do you think racial slurs just fall from people’s mouths so easily?

No I don’t

Have to turn this Pirates game off. Too sad.

Terrific O's-Braves game, 4 or 5 lead changes and ATL finally winning it 5-4.

Damn turned it off for the dodgers game (which was also excellent). Strider looked excellent while I was watching. These O’s are so fun now

Love that Mariners comeback. One more, boys, so close to .500!

This was sweet!

https://www.mlb.com/news/masataka-yoshida-meets-his-idol-bryce-harper

I can’t tell if the pitchcoms actually break regularly or if acting like it isn’t working is the new stalling tactic in the face of the pitch clock

Probably the latter.

The dodgers v padres game was very dodgers v padres’y. Feels like we have their number for late inning comebacks. Mookie ties it in the 9th, two ours with a solo homer, followed by cold-streak ROY outman hitting a three runner in extras. Rivalry definitely heating up more between these two teams. Good for baseball

i'm just going to say it: there are too many players named lowe right now

We don't know what to say. Just watch. pic.twitter.com/rOUxKpIA4F

— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) May 8, 2023

If you are not going to wear a cup (which is crazy), at least slide with your back to the throw (which is Sliding 101, is it not?).

i would assume you don't want your back to the play/where the ball is coming from (ball to the back of the head and all that). the outcome in this instance is a 1-1M-type event

Sliding with your back facing the throw allows you to react quickly to an overthrow (and obviously prevents you from getting hit in the face or groin).

If you're sliding with your back to the outfield, you're still focused on the base and the tagging infielder, not watching the path of the ball. Don't think I've seen a front-facing base stealer avoid a beaning by squirming away mid-slide.

feel like, back in the day, whenever i approached a base that required sliding, i just randomly chose some variant for no reason at all

which is no doubt among the reasons i was a shitty ballplayer. but at least i wore a cup

the outcome in this instance is a 1-1M-type event

drove around for a bit earlier today, thinking about how to make this into a "-2 balls type event" joke, couldn't cross the bridge

trea_turner_sliding dot gif was especially incredible for me

xp

i remember when i got my first jock strap from my parents, it was just the strap without the cup, and i didn't know it was missing anything. wore just that little cupless jock strap for a couple games

one time in high school i somehow . . . didn't bring my cup? and i was playing 3B, and the infield at mars hs (pa) kind of undulated underneath the grass and i basically spent the game in a state of terror

but also i hit one of my exactly three high school homers? perhaps i'd have made the majors if i'd been abelarded

dang, you hit a HR? you're a legend in my book, must have felt amazing. i crushed exactly one ball, hit the sweet spot and swung my hardest. it went to mid-deep CF and was easily caught. my playing days were ended by infielders finally learning how to handle routine ground balls from me

all three of my hs homers were on the road (because the LF pole at my home field was 470 and i was incapable of not pulling the ball)

and all of them were surprising to me. hitting a ball square on is an absolute joy, but i can only imagine what hitting a no-doubter is like

http://capricorncity.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Homer-Simpson-at-Bat.gif

it me

From an Athletic piece today:

1984 Tigers, 31-5. Won World Series.
1902 Pirates, 30-6. No World Series (the first was in 1903).
1939 Yankees, 29-7. Won World Series.
1928 Yankees, 29-7. Won World Series
1912 Giants, 29-7. Lost World Series.
2023 Rays, 29-7. ????

Impressive, no doubt. But as an indicator of World Series potential, the Rays’ 29-7 record means only so much.

All of the other teams on the above list, except for the ‘84 Tigers, advanced straight to the Series after finishing with the best regular-season record in their respective leagues. The ‘84 Tigers needed to first beat the Royals in a best-of-five league championship series. The 2023 Rays, if they win the AL East, would need to win a best-of-five division series and best-of-seven LCS to reach the World Series.

another thing about those early teams is that their record over the first 36 games represented a larger proportion of the season

also they didn't have wild card, division, and league championship series to toss the coin on

oops, sorry clemenza, i see yr quoted text alludes to that

I feel a little bad for the Rays in that they could go 110-52 and odds are it will amount to absolutely nothing.

(Not that a handful of other 105- to 110-win teams in the wild-card era didn't face the same steep mountain.)

i don't know anything about old baseball, but doesn't it seem like starting 29-7 in 1912 would be more the product of luck than in 2023, when there is statistical analysis and player conditioning and video analysis and AI and etc etc

Almost no home runs in the game would significantly reduce luck imo (round bat, round ball)

Almost every home run in 1912 was inside the park, so speed, fielding etc all come into play - but none of it comes into play for ye good olde dinger

the distribution of team quality was wildly variant in the early game. so many of the best players were not allowed to play in MLB, the modern minor league/farm development system was decades away, and i have to imagine there were a lot of shenanigans with owners who didn't care about the quality of the team

in those days, if you had a good nickname and a notable mustache you would basically be the starting shortstop

To me 29-7 in 2023 is more meaningful in 2023 than 100 years ago...but I'm at work in a kindergarten class right now and would need some time to explain that!

I've just become more and more skeptical about everything either pre-Ruth, pre-war, or pre-integration (not quite sure where to draw the line). I will say, when I scrolled through some AL standings from the early '20s, the gap between the top and the bottom wasn't noticeably different than today.

if you wanna see something fun, check out the 1899 Cleveland Spiders on bbref:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CLV/1899.shtml

finished 20-134, which was only 6 wins under their pythag. they fired their first manager Lave Cross after he went 8-30 and Joe Quinn somehow managed to go 12-104 the rest of the way. their best pitcher, Jim Hughey, pitched 32 complete games and nearly 300 innings. his ERA was 5.41. they hit a grand total of 12 home runs on the year. shit, I feel like *I* could've played on that team

The year before that the Spiders were a respectable team and Cy Young was their main pitcher. He pitched nine years for the Spidermen. They lost the '92 Series to the Beaneaters, which I'm still mad about.

andrew mccutchen hitting dingers in a pirates uniform just feels right

BREAKING: #Rays place RHP Drew Rasmussen on 60-day IL

— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) May 12, 2023

end of year Rays' rotation will be their current AA team at this rate.

The Nationals are close but nobody’s home run celebration touches the Mariners

No. Doubt. pic.twitter.com/s6tWfAYQFc

— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) May 13, 2023

You'll put somebody's eye out with that thing.

Seriously! I assumed it was plastic but it’s not!

It stands six and a half feet tall, weighs nearly 30 pounds and was so sharp out of the delivery box that its spikes have been dulled. The Mariners’ new trident, unveiled after each home run and bestowed to each slugger who goes deep, is as profound as it looks.

Absolute

Adding insult to tonight's proceedings: the Citi Field video board briefly just shut off during an at-bat, causing a momentary stoppage in play. When it turned back on, it displayed a massive Rays logo. Fans booed.

Then José Siri hit another homer.

Rays 7, Mets 1, top six. pic.twitter.com/KRgwtT8BNr

— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) May 17, 2023

John Schneider: "shut up, shut up fat boy, shut up"

George Costanza must be up to his old tricks pic.twitter.com/WaLyHZyeYA

— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) May 16, 2023

A’s win with a Ruiz walk-off single: pic.twitter.com/Fi2yY8RLMu

— Jessica Kleinschmidt (@KleinschmidtJD) May 17, 2023

wow absolutely no one there for the 12th

dying @ the rays logo

It’s incredible. Just unreal how you can fuck up that much

paid attendance in oakland last night was 3,261 so there was barely anyone there to begin with

and the place seats 47K for baseball (56K if they took the tarps off mount davis)

ftr, class a dayton drew more than twice that last night (to see the home team get no-hit)

at least brent rooker is off to a nice start

btw . . . rich hill!